"Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man." (Maria Goeppert-Mayer)
"Physics is unable to stand on its own feet, but needs a metaphysics on which to support itself, whatever fine airs it may assume towards the latter." (Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation", 1819)
"If the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics." (Pierre Duhem, "The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory", 1906)
"Physics is not a machine one can take apart; one cannot try each piece in isolation and wait, to adjust it, until its solidity has been minutely checked." (Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem, 1914)
"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover." (Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Philosophy", 1927)
"Physics is the attempt at the conceptual construction of a model of the real world and its lawful structure." (Albert Einstein, [letter to Moritz Schlick] 1931)
"For physics is not about the real world, it is about 'abstractions' from the real world, and this is what makes it so scientific." (Anthony Standen, "Science is a Sacred Cow", 1950)
"[…] if the aim of physical theories is to explain experimental laws, theoretical physics is not an autonomous science; it is subordinate to metaphysics." (Pierre-Maurice-Marie Duhem, "The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory", 1954)
"The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world." (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, "The Phenomenon of Man", 1959)
"Physics is not a finished logical system. Rather, at any moment it spans a great confusion of ideas, some that survive like folk epics from the heroic periods of the past, and others that arise like utopian novels from our dim premonitions of a future grand synthesis." (Steven Weinberg, "Gravitation and Cosmology: Principles and Applications of the General Theory of Relativity", 1972)
"Physics is the basic science of matter and energy, and engineering is physics applied to structures and machines." (R McNeill Alexander, "Dynamics of Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Giants", 1989)
"Physics is not difficult; it’s just weird. […] Physics is weird because intuition is false." (Vincent Icke, "The Force of Symmetry", 1995)
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